John Fitzgerald Obama?

I saw this picture on the Web earlier and thought it was rather interesting. I am not so sure if Obama really has that much in common with JFK or if people just wish it were the case. After all, it has been decades since the Left had their love affair with Robert and John Kennedy. The old middle aged hippies who came of age in the Kennedy Era have joined forces with the young wanna-be 60s hippies who have gotten their kicks opposing the Iraq War as if it were Vietnam II.

Without a doubt, many youthful Republicans had a similar experience with George W. Bush, as if they were falsely nostalgic for Ronald Reagan. But the important thing to remember about 2nd Comings is that unless they are 2nd Comings of the same person, then they aren't the same person, and nobody has ever been the 2nd Coming of somebody else who ended up being that great.

Bush was supposed to be Reagan. He wasn't.

Clinton was supposed to be JFK II. He wasn't.

Now Obama is supposed to be the return of Camelot--but he won't be. In fact, we really don't know much about what he *will* be, and that's what should be concerning to Democrats (many of whom seem prepared to run a candidate who has never had a significantly contested general election campaign against a Republican in his career), and to the American public.

As America's attitude towards Party Politics evolves, I believe many Americans residing in the non-partisan center (which are now a third of all Americans) will begin to look at the two parties' candidates and make determinations about whether or not they trust those parties to select the right person for the job in their primaries. If Obama is elected and proves to be a disaster, then the Democrats will pay dearly both in the mid-term elections in 2010 and especially in the 2012 Presidential election and beyond.

The law of unintended consequences seems to have greater caution against an unknown like Obama than against a very known quantity like Hillary Clinton. Since the end of the World War II era, the Republican Party has held the White House for 36 years, the Democratic Party for 20. Bill Clinton was the only Democrat during this time to be elected to two full terms, whereas Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush were elected to two full terms on the Republican side. This is partially because of the disastrous presidencies of Lyndon Johnson (especially the Vietnam War) and Jimmy Carter (economic policy and extreme weakness in foreign policy), who seemed to have marred their parties' future chances. Even Watergate wasn't enough for the Democrats to convince the American public that it belonged in the White House for very long.

The Democrats have done themselves no favors. They have nominated a pacifist (McGovern), an idiot (Carter), a tax-happy wonk (Mondale), and joke (Dukakis), a bore (Gore), and a gold-digging, botox-injecting Vet who betrayed his fellow sailors (Kerry). Are they really ready to nominate an untested, inexperienced law professor from Chicago just because he talks pretty?

The damage that could be done to the Democratic Party is perhaps greater than could be done to the country if Obama is nominated (and especially elected). If he is really terrible, the country will put another party in charge of Congress (whether it is the Republicans or an emergent 3rd party remains to be seen), and he will be immobilized for the last 2 years of his term, and then like Jimmy Carter he will lose in a landslide, and the Republicans might be back in power for another decade or more.

In the coming days, this blog will examine, in-depth, the policy statements and claims made by Obama on his website, and see if the country really knows what its getting into if it decides to elect him as President.